180 CHAPTER9POSITIONINGPRODUCTSTHROUGH THELIFECYCLE
commercialization. The purpose of each stage is to determine whether the idea
should be dropped or moved to the next stage.
The consumer-adoption process is the process by which customers learn about
new products, try them, and adopt or reject them. The five stages in this process are
awareness, interest, evaluation, trial, and adoption. This process is influenced by many
factors beyond the marketer’s control, including consumers’ and organizations’ will-
ingness to try new products, personal influences, and the characteristics of the new
product or innovation.
Because economic conditions change and competitive activity varies, companies
normally reformulate their marketing strategy several times during the product life
cycle. The introduction stage of this cycle is marked by slow growth and minimal prof-
its as the new product gains distribution. If successful, the product enters a growth
stage marked by rapid sales and increasing profits. The company attempts to improve
the product, enter new market segments and distribution channels, and reduce prices
slightly. In the maturity stage, sales growth slows and profits stabilize, causing the firm
to try to modify the market, the product, or the marketing mix to renew sales growth.
Finally, the product enters the decline stage, when the firm must decide whether to
increase, maintain, or decrease its investment; harvest the product; or divest as advan-
tageously as possible.
In the competitive global marketplace, the key to competitive advantage is dif-
ferentiation. A market offering can be differentiated by product, services, personnel,
channel, and image. A difference is worth establishing to the extent that it is impor-
tant, distinctive, superior, preemptive, affordable, and profitable. Positioning is the act
of designing the company’s offering and image to occupy a distinctive place in the tar-
get market’s mind. Many marketers advocate positioning according to a single prod-
uct benefit, although double- and triple-benefit positioning can be successful if used
carefully.NOTES
- Christopher Power, “Flops,”Business Week,August 16, 1993, pp. 76–82.
2.New Products Management for the 1980s(New York: Booz, Allen & Hamilton, 1982). - Erika Rasmussen, “Staying Power,”Sales & Marketing Management,August 1998, pp. 44–46.
- Robert G. Cooper and Elko J. Kleinschmidt, New Products: The Key Factors in Success
(Chicago: American Marketing Association, 1990). - Modesto A. Madique and Billie Jo Zirger, “A Study of Success and Failure in Product
Innovation: The Case of the U.S. Electronics Industry,”IEEE Transactions on Engineering
Management,November 1984, pp. 192–203. - Eric von Hippel, “Lead Users: A Source of Novel Product Concepts,”Management Science,
July 1986, pp. 791–805. Also see his The Sources of Innovation(New York: Oxford University
Press, 1988); and “Learning from Lead Users,” in Marketing in an Electronic Age,ed. Robert
D. Buzzell (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1985), pp. 308–17. - Constance Gustke, “Built to Last,”Sales & Marketing Management,August 1997, pp. 78–83.
- “The Ultimate Widget: 3-D ‘Printing’ May Revolutionize Product Design and
Manufacturing,”U.S. News & World Report,July 20, 1992, p. 55. - Dan Deitz, “Customer-Driven Engineering,”Mechanical Engineering,May 1996, p. 68.
- See David B. Hertz, “Risk Analysis in Capital Investment,”Harvard Business Review,January-
February 1964, pp. 96–106. - See John Hauser, “House of Quality,”Harvard Business Review,May-June 1988, pp. 63–73.
Customer-driven engineering is also called “quality function deployment.” See Lawrence